Reviews of art, culture and literature

Category: religion

“Every participant in a discussion about the Church of Scientology reveals a position by using the nouns ‘religion’ and ‘cult’. The former is accorded a degree of respect and recognition (socially, morally and legally); the latter is regarded with suspicion and hostility. However, nominating a group as ‘religion’ or ‘cult’ does not – a priori– establish the veracity of its core beliefs. So what is Scientology?

“Scientology is a religion/cult/philosophy which offers an all-American blend of self-help, psychological counselling, health improvement and Masonic-style careerism (especially in the acting world), based on ‘scientific research’ by science-fiction writer L Ron Hubbard (1911-1986). Scientological methods have been claimed to reduce stress, reveal past lives, end drug addiction, cure mental illness and heal physical illness. Caught off-guard by the huge success of his self-help manualDianetics (1950), Hubbard decided to start the Church of Scientology as an organisation to oversee the ‘auditing’ of subjects (a talking therapy utilising an ‘e-meter’ similar to a lie-detector) in order to control and monetise it. Scientology’s hostility to psychiatry, which Scientologists consider responsible for worldwide murder and degradation, is partly because Scientology was founded not in opposition to psychiatry but in competition with it, using concepts and techniques pioneered by psychiatry. Professional scientists were unimpressed by Dianetics. One of them described it not as science fiction but ‘fictional science’…”